Portland Web Design

This week I attended the advanced seo series taught by Colleen Wright of the Search Engine Academy of Oregon.  I am a firm believer that you should never stop learning and you can be knowledgable in your subject of interest but once you think you know it all you are in BIG trouble — Arogance can be the death of your business or at the very least your soul.  With that said,  it’s important to invest in your skill set.  Luckily if it’s your own business it’s a write off and if you work for someone else hopefully they will encourage you to take outside classes and have a budget for continued education.

Going into to this class I was unsure of how useful this class was going to be. I was pleasantly suprised, Not so much for all the new knowledge that was presented because happily I knew most of it, however I did learn new things as well.  Knowing class material can  be a good thing because it reaffirms your competitive abilities in the market place as well as re-stimulates your mind with fresh new ways to look at online marketing.  By no means was it wasted time anytime you learn something new, network or revive your passion is money well spent and a good use of time.         

Collen Wright is a very nice woman and she is a very good speaker and knowledgable.  She provided an organized, well informed class while still having a fun sense of humor.  

Scott Hendison came and spoke on Social Media and provided some great tips, valuable information and shared a lot of knowledge and experience that the group benefited from.  I enjoyed his presentation, his passion for the subject matter and his genuine desire to help others become better at Search Engine Marketing.   He highly recommended this as a great source of inforamation http://www.planetocean.com  I’ve also added it to my blogroll along with numerous other favorite resources of mine.)

Doug Williams spoke about blogging and that was interesting as well. One of my most favorite bloggers that I love to follow is Yaro Starak.  I encourage you to sign up for his newsletter it’s worth reading.

Day three was good too it covered more anaylitical tools and ways to track the competition. The class was small a total of 5 people which I thought was perfect. We had various levels of skills and Thomas and Sarah from Pop Art were there and they were gracious enough to share their skills and talents throught out the week. At times I wish I would have remained in the corporate arena instead of working for myself but honestly the joy and rewards i get from having my own business out weigh any of the envy I may feel at times.

It’s been hard to sit at a desk for the past three days from 8-5.  As a person who works from home I’m used to mutli tasking and definately taking a mind break when needed — But its been a very refreshing week and I met some very nice people.  While having a littel down time I found this fun site to check out  http://www.officesnapshots.com  I’ll have to add a  photo of my cave soon!

Here is a take away tip, I found this useful: if you are looking at places to submit an article go to google and type in “submit an article” +  ”your keyword phrase”.  Cool things from this week to check out: www.Mootools.net, www.Ping.fm & www.Plurk.com

Today I met with a new potential client and had done my due dillegence before the meeting and had broken down all the services and their cost. The client and I met for lunch and it was a very nice time. However I caught myself going on and on about all the various SEO and Social Media avenues that are available.  

Later as I was thinking about our meeting I realized that I can’t forget when talking to clients it’s important to remember they are coming to you because they need your help and that means you need to slow down … and not over whelm them with information — even though, if you are like me I am very passionate about SEO and the power of social media and all it has to offer that I could literally lock my self in a room with others and discuss it all night long. 

So here are some key tips for meeting with Clients for potential jobs.

1. set up a meeting face to face (if this is possible — if not a phone conversation at the very least)

2. prior to meeting or talking to them – research them online. Check out their website, their products, their branding .. get a feel for them.

3. prepare a list of your services, include associated costs.. like a alacart menu

4. then run thru each of the items so they understand why each are important. Looking at setting up a micro network on squidoo or hub pages may mean nothing to them and mean so much to you. Or they may think of link trading as one thing while you think of it as another. 

5. Don’t over whelm them. Give them brief explanations of these topics cover the importance so they can justify in their head the expense.

6. When finished ask them if they have any initial questions?

7. Next encourage them to take this preliminary quote home and review contact you with any additional questions. 

8. If you can.. ask them for a budget that day ensure them that you will follow up with in a day or two with a personalized online marketing strategy based on their unique needs that will get them more traffic. DON’T ever promise them top position on google – no one but google can promise that. You can assure them that your work has gotten many if not all of your clients in the past top placement, but it’s better to over deliver than ever underdeliver especially when Google is ever changing and the ways we stay on top are ever growing.  

In summary, do your best, be personable,  be honest, and reliable and your customers will be happy and refer you to others!  Communication is key to making your potential customers happy and comfortable with your services! 

Last night as a I was sending my thank yous to new followers on Twitter and updating my Status on Facebook and accepting new friends there and checking out my space (which I have to say isn’t my favorite) Facebook seems to be so much more user friendly and less polluted with scammers, marketers and pick up artists. I digress anyway.. As I was attending to daily business and yes of course trying not to get lost in these updates –because you know you can spend literally hours on these sites if you are not careful.. and still not finish your regular customer to do list.

Months prior I had learned about Sherman Hu from a class I had taken, it covered everything related to Social Media it was intense. Sherman was one of the guest video speakers. He did these great video interviews explaining video production, streaming video and the ins and outs to utilizing video online successfully.

Two days ago I looked him up on twitter and sent him a nice little note saying I’m gonna follow him… then a day later he follows me. I send him a thank you.. and then later that evening (which was last night) he sees me on facebook and sends me an instant chat. See how it works.. social media is so awesome!!

We chatted and got to have a real conversation one on one for over an hour. He shared some tips and tricks, I learned about his life, he learned about mine a bit and just talked about general stuff.

Prior to WEB 2.0 I would have probably had to sign up for a conference somewhere to go listen to him speak and hope I had 5 minutes of his time to ask him some business related questions. We would have probably never gotten to know anything more than that about each other.. connect in a real personal way.

I hope you see the importance of WEB 2.0 and what I described up above. It literally shows you — you can achieve anything you want to do because now you are in control of your networking like never before. Don’t get me wrong it’s not all about networking for business it’s about meeting new nice people and developing new connections with others around the world. But if expanding your knowledge, learning or growing your business is a goal of yours then there is no better place to be than on the web to learn, grow, network or mentor others.

I look forward to meeting Sherman Hu some day and will continue to follow his blogs and video UStreams and admire him even more for being approachable, responsive, and real.